Increasing Numbers on the Rails

During the 1920s people who rode the rails were either seasonal workers or permanent transients called hoboes (or tramps or bums). The hoboes were not in search of jobs; instead they sought a detachment from mainstream American society. They were content to live a life of aimless wandering. Seasonal workers traveled from state to state, working on farms as various crops were ready for harvest. Through the 1920s, the railroad police reported that on any given transcontinental freight train about six to eight men would be hitching a ride. By the early 1930s, railroad police reported swarms of transients, up to two or three hundred per train—many of them young boys.

Because transients were constantly on the move, no accurate estimate of their number was ever available. But by 1932 it was estimated that 250,000 youths between the ages of fifteen and...